I DON'T REALLY WANT TO GET DRUNK

I just want to drink beer and play Bananagrams. This will happen. Hunter will buy me some beer. (Medium beer, not awful beer. Bottles, not cans. Never cans.) But who will play Bananagrams with me? Maybe also cards. Rummy or hearts. Strip poker. Not strip poker. I'm so bad at poker. Everyone will be clothed and I will be totally nude. It will just be awkward for everyone. Anyway, what I mean is games while drinking, not drinking games.

I've been thinking about this for like two weeks. I don't want to go to a party, I don't want to drink stupid mixed drinks or do shots, I just want to drink beer and play games with people I like. I just want to drink beer.

In other news, you know how I was going to give blood today? Well, my hemoglobin as 12.4. (And that's on the second pinprick--the first was 11.1.) They require it to be 12.5. I pointed out that she had only tried two of my fingers, and I have two more she could try--and another whole hand--but it doesn't work like that. So that's the story of why I didn't give blood and have two poofy bandaids on my fingers that make typing much more difficult.

In still other news, I really love my math classes. Like I told Twitter, they're magic! Seriously! Everything apparently comes down to solving a system of linear equations, and those you can solve using magic. I feel like I'm at fucking Hogwarts, I swear to god. It's useful to admit that you probably define both "everything" and "magic" differently than I am here, but it's still pretty cool. You'd think it was magic too, if you had taken enough math to fulfill the requirements for this class.

It makes me a little sad that it's not that you guys CAN'T do math, like it's not that you're too stupid or anything, it's just that you don't KNOW enough math to get excited about it the way I do. If everybody could get to the levels of math where they're seriously teaching you things that seem like magic, everybody would like math. There has to be a way to make it interesting earlier on. First it's obvious, then it's confusing, then it's hard, and then it's magic. (This is going from pre-algebra to where I am now, see--pre-algebra and algebra one are mostly boring, and then algebra two and precalc start to get confusing, calculus is hard, and then once you get past learning the theory of it all, they teach you these beautiful magical ways to do everything. And they also teach you some other things, but it's really all magic. All those things about which they say, "Well, it CAN be done, but we're not going to try in this class." It's really really cool, I swear. But nobody cares.)

Anyway, some other things have inconvenienced me today. I need yarn to make socks for my father, as I mentioned, and today is the day when I decided to buy it. So I do my whole thing, check out using Paypal, give myself a little thumbs-up, and forget all about it because it's class time (yes, I buy yarn in the time before the professor enters the room, it's not crazy, I'm a winner). Now, having been totally cheated out of giving blood (ffffffff), I'm waiting for my brother to get here, and I check my email. There are a couple confirmation emails, aaand an email from Paypal saying that they're douchebags who "limited" my account, "coincidentally" right after I tried to pay for yarn. They wanted me to change my password and security questions, and "confirm my location" by answering the landline phone at my billing address. This would be fine except that I am not at my billing address. I also can't confirm it with my cell phone, even though this is the phone number linked to my billing address.

Words that describe Paypal, in my opinion:

• c is for cockbags
• u is for undergarments (crusty ones)
• n is for ne'er-do-wells (shut up) 
• t is for tracheas (shut up again, I'm bad at this)
• b is for bitches (I know that one!)
• a is for anuses
• g is for grandparents (YES I MEAN IT AS AN INSULT)
• s is for stupid meanies

So, yeah, I hope you enjoyed my acrostic poem. It was pretty deep, if I do say so myself.

THIS IS NOT A CRAFTING BLOG

And you would all be a lot happier if I would just remember that. I just do a lot of knitting. I really like knitting. You may be aware of that. It's kind of my favorite. But, you may remember that I said that I was going to make a quilt over winter break? Obviously that didn't happen (or I would be so proud of myself that you would never be able to shut me up, and also I would be under a quilt all the time), BUT I have once again been reading page upon page of quilting blog and finding it very inspiring. I have to keep reminding myself that it is 100% NOT WORTH buying quilting fabric when I have no sewing machine, no iron, and absolutely no time to learn to hand-sew, not to mention the time I don't have to actually do any sewing. Anyway, the real "but" here is that there are plenty of sewing machines at home, and my mother really loves placemats. And my sister even likes sewing! So, when I go home for spring break, I have concocted a plan under which my sister and I will make my mother a set of placemats and maybe some potholders/trivets to match. I know approximately how large a placemat should be, and I know, intellectually, how to piece a quilt top, and I know, intellectually, the basics of how to put a quilt together. So, it should be not that difficult for us to do this. Provided we both actually still want to do it come March.

Other than that, I'm still planning on making tons of socks in the next while. I have plans upon plans, basically. The ones I'm making right now (that I'm sooo behind on--my sister has now FINISHED a sock), socks for my dad, and socks for my mom. These are the ones I have deadlines for (well, no deadline on the matchy socks, but my dad's birthday is March 18 and my mother's is April 22), and then there are these really cool cabled socks I'm excited to make as my first super cabley project. I've done some other cables, but nothing this complex. I'd link, but I think Ravelry requires membership, so it would be moot.

More updates to follow as I get more into my classes. Probably Tuesday--after I've had all my classes. I did wind up switching to the harder math, because that's just how it's done, and I won't have that until Tuesday. I'm afraid not having been there on the first day is going to fuck me over somehow, but at the same time it can't possibly, right? Right. Obviously. He couldn't possibly require homework from the book that I won't have gotten until probably next Friday, right? Oooobviously. Maybe he'll have a book I could photocopy from or something.

In conclusion, I really hope my class is canceled tomorrow morning because I don't want to go.

BLACKBERRY PIE IS DELICIOUS

But I don't think I will buy a whole one again. Maybe slices at pie-serving restaurants, but not a whole pie. Blackberries are too large for pies. Hard to eat. But delicious. Plus, my sister won't eat blackberry pie, so my mother cut it into enormous slices (like, 1/5 of pie enormous) so as to get rid of it in a reasonable amount of time.

I'm knitting socks. My whole family is getting knitting gifts this year. Maybe my sister will get yarn instead of a whole knit thing, but everyone else. Knit things. Probably mostly socks. Socks for my mother, socks for my father... Plenty of socks for me. I love socks. Maybe a pair of socks for my brother, but these gloves are technically getting to him this year, so maybe that counts. Everything about him is enormous. It's a pain. OH GOD WHY DID I PHRASE THAT.

Anyway, yeah, socks, I love socks.

YOU GUYS GET THE SAME POST I JUST GAVE MY ~*~SECRET BLOG~*~

I friggin hate buying textbooks. SO EXPENSE. If I bought them all from the bookstore this semester, I would be handing over $634. And that's not going to happen.
Fortunately, my friend Amanda took Diff-EQs this semester and told me that she had torrented a PDF of the textbook and had no problems, and it was an easy, fast download that even included the Student Solutions Manual, so that chops off $211, thank goodness.
Then, wonder of wonders, the international edition of my $154 Linear Algebra textbook was available for $35, saving me $119.
I got the Discrete Math book (asking price $132) for $60 (and kept $72), and I'm looking to save about $60 on the book for Intro to Teaching (bookstore wants $136, alibris.com wants $76+undisclosed shipping).
So, basically, I'm hoping to save, let's see, $(211+119+72+60) = $462. Meaning that instead of blithely paying the bookstore $634 for books that, knowing me, will likely go predominantly unused, I'm paying various online booksellers $(0+35+60+80) = $175. (Or so, depending on that shipping--I haven't bought the book yet because I'd like to hold out for less than half the bookstore price.)

Anyway, I'm quite pleased with myself. Now I get to look for much cheaper versions of Hunter's textbooks! Unless he already bought them, in which case I will say "tsk tsk" to him. They just... They want you to give them so much money. It's not right. Moral of the story: always Google the ISBN you're looking for, check abebooks.com and half.com and Amazon, and get the friggin' international edition if it's available. I know it looks like a scam, but it's actually not. Usually, anyway.

Other than that, home is okay. It's 2011 now, so that's kind of neat, only not actually that neat, you know? We still have our Christmas tree, some of my friends have left, and tonight I get to have a super awkward dinner conversation with my parents because my sister is off at an Academic Team meet. Great.

Oh, crap, I still have to buy ballet things. My mother might pay for those, though, because she's so nice. I need a leotard, tights, and shoes. Urgh. I'm going to feel downright chunky when I put those on, woo. And people will know all about my oddly-shaped hips. I know I'm not fat, I just have weird bulges in odd places. I don't know why my body stores fat so differently from everyone else's body. Not fair.


Also, today I learned that the class I thought I had on Mondays from 4:30 to 7:10 is actually on Tuesdays! Yaaay! Yay because I love to inconvenience people and make them wait for me for dinner.


ETA: blog post, y u no look like other blog posts?
Oh, right, because I had not yet DEFEATED YOU.

I'D SAY I HATE BEING AT HOME BUT I JUST DON'T GIVE A FUCK

I can count the number of times I've left the house on one hand. I went to knit night, for a Christmas tree, to the Christmas Eve church service, to spend an hour and a half curling, to play board games with a friend's friends, and downtown. Wait, that's actually six outings. Good for me, I broke 5. That's not quite a relief.

To be honest, I haven't wanted to do anything but sit and watch teevee and knit, for almost a month now.

My father gave me roving, and I spun about 150 yards of yarn, and then knit a pair of fingerless gloves. The yarn was shitty--a 2-ply, only I didn't ply it very well at all, so it was more like knitting with two 1-ply yarns held together than one 2-ply yarn. I also knit a sock, to complete a pair, and I have three fingers, well, and a half, left on the first of my brother's gloves. I won't see him until I'm back at school, and to be honest, they're boring as fuck, so I've been taking a break.

I don't like feeling like this.

I keep trying to get up earlier without going to sleep earlier. I have to get up and go downstairs so my mother won't accuse me of sleeping all day to avoid being part of the family, but, you know, then I just sleep on the couch. And knit. And watch teevee. I'm exhausted all the time. I don't want to do anything. I almost didn't go out on New Year's, but I did. I only complained about a third of the time, unlike last year when I complained more like three-quarters of the time. So that's an improvement. My sister and I still left at 11, and came home to find my parents watching some odd movie. We turned the computer over to regular television at 11:58 and watched the ball drop, then turned it back to their movie at 12:01. Woo. Exciting. But I didn't want to be watching people get drunk. Or watching people watch people get drunk. They're not even people I particularly like when they're sober. And then we went home.

I was supposed to see Jack over break, but when she texted me, I blew her off. Twice. She's leaving Tuesday, Sunday's her birthday, and I'm busy on Monday. I'm a great person. She even emailed, saying please don't just blow her off, but, you know. That's just me.

Anyway. Just a lovely, interesting little snippet about my break. I'd say I don't want to be here anymore, but I don't want to do anything else.

It's 6:21. I know I should be sleeping. I'm lying to myself when I think I should get up by 11:30. I don't want to go to bed. I don't want to be in the dark.